


The Same Mistakes

by folie_a_yeux



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Bisexuality, Comfort/Angst, F/F, Honor, Metalbending & Metalbenders, POV Multiple, Resolved Sexual Tension, Rough Oral Sex, Slow Burn, Social Commentary, Tenderness, more like lin BI fong amirite, secret histories
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-17
Updated: 2015-09-17
Packaged: 2018-04-17 18:41:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4677200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/folie_a_yeux/pseuds/folie_a_yeux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lin still tastes bile when she thinks about the fact that her sister was the one to teach the Avatar metalbending. Still feels the taut charge in her nerves when she considers what Kuvira is planning in the South. Still hates, and feeds, the fear growing in her stomach, as more and more of her officers leave for the New Earth Army, leaving her recruits with no experience and less sense.</p><p>And now, a detective had come from the Earth Kingdom, instead of to it. Intelligent, intuitive; hot-headed, but not cocky; and pulsing with the same vibrant charge, that thirst to test her limits, that Lin felt – still feels, if she’s honest – every time she passes her mother’s statue in front of police headquarters.</p><p>So she had decided to be reckless.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Same Mistakes

**Author's Note:**

> Lin and Mingyu's story takes place in the six months leading up to Kuvira's attack, through the Earth Empire's assault on Republic City and Kuvira's defeat.

Lin can feel the approaching transfer long before she reaches her door.

One of her first acts as Chief of Police was to install earthen slats in the floorboards, weaving their way from the administrative office on the first floor to her door on the third. Lin doesn’t like disappointment and she doesn’t like surprises. Being able to read the walk of whoever’s coming is a good way to avoid both.

Not a calm walk. Nervous. Driven, though, and purposeful. None of the mealy-mouthed side-stepping of that President of hers.

Besides. Time like this. Can’t afford to be picky.

Her new officer is still a floor away. Lin takes a moment to run through her file in her mind, stamping each fact into place like the key of a typer.

 _Zhao Mingyu._ The family name snaps uncomfortably at the edge of her mind, and she slots it back to the task at hand. Twenty-eight years old, if her file’s accurate. Citizen of the Earth Empire. Earthbender. Trained in Wolong, and sent to the Macau province five years back, to deal with some Fire Nation royalists working with a Triad gang to steal from their old land. Head of the detective force she’d joined within two years of coming there.

Well. She definitely had smarts. Lin had made sure to reach out to her contacts in Macau when Zhao had requested the transfer, and they’d had nothing but praise. So probably arrogant, too.

Still, arrogance had its benefits, if it could be tempered. It certainly gave the Avatar spunk. With Korra still being coddled by the Water Tribe, spirit vines at her borders, and Kuvira massing forces in the South — yes. It was easier to take a bit of bravado for granted, easy to feel in charge, with a powerhouse like the Avatar on your side. When you could get her to pay attention.

The knock, when it comes, is firm, loud, and even. Lin straightens her back. The metal plates of her uniform snap obligingly into place, holding her at perfect posture. Never hurts to appear taller, either.

“Well, come in. No sense wasting time.”

***

  
Mingyu tries to will the stray curls at the top of her hand from drifting down to tickle her forehead. She’s trying to focus on Chief Beifong’s neckpiece while she reviews her paperwork, following the intricate granulations surrounding the yellow band at the center, so she can steel herself, when the time comes, to look her directly in the eyes.

It’s not every day you get to work for the savior of Zaofu, and the hero of Air Temple Island. It’s not every day you meet the daughter of Toph Beifong when your stomach feels like its crawling out of your esophagus.

“So. Officer Zhao. Welcome to Republic City.” Chief Beifong snaps her folder shut. Mingyu raises her chin and meets her gaze. _Good. Now just get your throat to work._

“Happy to be here.” She gives a small nod. One corkscrew curl tickles her ear.

“We’re certainly glad to have you.”

Chief Beifong leans against her desk slightly, resting her hands with their grey metal cuffs against the table’s edge. It’s a calculated attempt to look less threatening. It would probably work better if her cramped office weren’t made entirely of metal. If her hair didn’t look as though it had been parted with a ruler. If her green eyes, above scarred, razor-sharp cheekbones, weren’t burrowing into Mingyu’s amber ones.

“There’s no need to stand on ceremony,” Chief Beifong says. “Take a seat.” She looks Mingyu over appraisingly. “I see you advanced to lead detective in Macau. Plenty of older officers there. More than a few detectives grew up in that province. You must have nabbed some very influential players.”

“Some bandits were making life difficult,” Mingyu replies, seating herself in one of the straight-backed chairs. Her new grey and brown uniform is as dark as her skin. It’s perfect for blending into the background, but she feels a twinge of nostalgia for the vibrant green material she’s used to. “And we had a few Fire Nation diehards to contend with. Still convinced Macau was part of their land.”

“Yes. I imagine you had as close to a city experience as you could in the Earth Kingdom, being stationed there. At least until your… enterprising new commander cleared the area.”

“She cleared them from _my_ area, Chief. But she made sure to drive them into the next one that needed claiming.”

Mingyu can’t believe she’s come this far to say something this stupid.

Kuvira had been brought up in Suyin Beifong’s household, after all. She had stopped Zaheer’s anarchy from engulfing the Earth Kingdom. Chief Beifong might view her as the only thing keeping the United Republic together. And she’d shot her mouth like she was a recruit in basic training.

Then again, she’s never been much for apologies when she didn’t mean them. Luckily, Chief Beifong saves her the trouble, a laugh escaping her mouth like a gruff bark.

“Let me put your mind at ease, Zhao. I don’t care what your politics are.” She pauses, crosses her arms, and assumes a sterner expression. “Because you no longer have them. Your duty is to protect Republic City and train under my officers, so you can pass on that training when you return to Macau. And the fastest rising recruits here aren’t the strongest, or the smartest. Certainly,” and her lip curls, like she’s bitten into a Waterlemon, “not the flashiest. You need to be dedicated. Dedication requires patience, concentration, and humility. Think you can handle that?”

Mingyu allows herself a smile, the first glimpse of emotion she’s let pass beyond her eyes. _Wolf smile_ , her mother had called it. Always a bit too hungry for her own good.

“Yes, Chief.”

“Well, then. We’ll start you on the Select Force tomorrow. No sense wasting time.”

“The Select Force?” No. Surely she doesn’t have this much bad luck in the space of five minutes. “But didn’t my file—”

“Didn’t your file, what?”

“I —” she swallows. “I can’t metalbend, Chief.”

Yes, it’s not every day you get to humiliate yourself in front of your hero.

“I can earthbend. Well enough for policing, and I’m good at hand to hand, if it comes to that.” She wishes there were some way to bend the blood back from her cheeks. “I’m happy to work wherever you need me. But I know the Select Force uses metalbending, as a matter of course. I would only be slowing you down.”

Lin frowns. “There’s no shame in earthbending as a pure form,” she says. A bit roughly, but probably still soft, Mingyu thinks, for her. “It’s a crucial skill on its own. But you haven’t even had instruction in metalbending. There’s no reason to dismiss your abilities before you’ve even worked at it."

“I have, Chief.” She takes a deep breath. She can feel some of her old scars rend against the metal belt of her uniform, burns against cotton against steel. Got to keep her emotions under control. “I trained at Zaofu, for a few weeks. Suyin – They said I had a block. That I probably wouldn’t be able to master it.”

“You trained with Su?” Lin’s eyes aren’t so much probing as piercing her now, holding her to the chair. Mingyu is glad, though it’s silly to think it, that there’s iron and leather between those eyes and her more sensitive organs.

“I’m honored by your faith in me, Chief. I’m happy to take more time, to train on my own – ”

“Nonsense,” she snaps. Her brow is furrowed. “You can’t master a new form of bending, especially one this untested, by yourself. It would be a waste of time.”

Mingyu nods. She has worked hard, in her years as detective, to go against her natural inclination to be rash. When she was sixteen —almost molten with the desire to prove herself – she had mouthed off more than was good for her, relied on intuition for answers rather than leashing it as a guide. And she’s already said too much, today. She swallows any further arguments, and prepares for her new, demoted, assignment.

“Besides,” Lin says gruffly. “ _I’ll_ be training you.”

***

 

Lin had thought she’d outgrown recklessness.

It had been a hard lesson to learn. Years spent shoving down frustration, tamping her anger. Forgoing sleep for practice drills, abandoning dinner to talk strategy with her officers. Tempering her bluntness around anyone she didn’t respect.

So. Su hadn’t been able to train her.

Lin still tastes bile when she thinks about the fact that her sister was the one to teach the Avatar metalbending. Still feels the taut charge in her nerves when she considers what Kuvira is planning in the South. Still hates, and feeds, the fear growing in her stomach, as more and more of her officers leave for the New Earth Army, leaving her recruits with no experience and less sense.

And now, a detective had come from the Earth Kingdom, instead of to it. Intelligent, intuitive; hot-headed, but not cocky; and pulsing with the same vibrant charge, that thirst to test her limits, that Lin felt – still feels, if she’s honest – every time she passes her mother’s statue in front of police headquarters.

So she had decided to be reckless.

“We didn’t get metalbending from the badgermoles,” she tells Mingyu. Her new pupil follows her down the center of the Future Industries tech line. Fire benders punch short blasts into the heating structures when needed, as non-bending metalworkers pour molten ore into their forges.

“Our first teachers were the workers around you. Many of them can still manipulate metal with their tools better than benders can manage with their energy. The way a smith chooses to forge, or cast, or refine their materials, is how we learn to respect the metals we can work with, and eliminate the ones we can’t.”

Lin hasn’t talked this much in a while. She’s grateful for the boom and clang of the workers they pass, a few staring curiously after Lin and Mingyu as they walk by. It helps her adjust to her position as teacher without having to do much listening or standing still.

“Do you know what ferrous metal is?”

Mingyu lifts her head. She’s several steps behind, examining an ornamental cup in the hands of an elderly solderer. Lin snorts. Impatient, impatient, impatient.

“I remember that from Zaofu,” Mingyu says. “It means the metal has iron. Lots of it.”

“ _Enough_ of it,” Lin corrects her, but she’s impressed, in spite of herself. “Non-ferrous metals can be almost anything. Silver. Iridium. Brass. But ferrous metal is difficult. You want good iron…” She gestures to their left, where a poster hangs of Future Industries CEO Asami Sato. “Well, then you need to get rid of the impurities. But those impurities – extra minerals – that’s exactly what we need to bend.”

Mingyu’s brow furrows. “That’s what Su told me. Did your mother teach you that?”

Lin gives a wry grin. “Not exactly. My mother knew the basic principles, of course, but metalwork as a discipline was still pretty young when I grew up here, even without bending. When I was younger, I used to sneak into the Cabbage Corp facility to watch the workers make engine pieces. They taught me about the different metals.” still remembers the day Lau Gan-Lan’s father caught her and ran her off, shouting that he wouldn’t let another generation of Tophs ruin his new business.

“Is that how you figured out the grappling cables?”

“Those cables are a special blend. Just supple enough to wield, but quite stiff when the gangue isn’t being manipulated. I tell Ms. Sato to put aside any new tech she makes for Republic City police, to make sure the ore doesn’t become too clean.”

Enough chit-chat, Lin thinks abruptly. Can’t afford to waste time. It must have been at least half an hour since Lin had waved Mingyu over for her lecture. A good hour since the plummeting elevators had first taken them into the bowels of the Sato company, so her transfer could ask questions of the workers in the rows and rows of benches that covered the floor, and observe the forges that sank into the walls.

“You’ve seen metalbending as it began. Now it’s time to see where it takes you.” Striding to the bank of elevators, Lin ushers Mingyu in, presses the button for one of the Testing Floors, and waits as the elevator zooms downstairs.

***

 

It’s nice to be back among the training equipment. Lin hasn’t had the opportunity, the excuse, to visit a Testing Floor in years. Asami Sato’s equipment was always, inevitably, perfect. Now if only the girl would focus her energies completely on her company. Stop wasting her time on letters that never got fully answered.

“You are in charge of your own feelings, your insecurities and strengths,” she instructs Mingyu as they enter the spacious room, stone walls gleaming, an assortment of discarded police inventions piled in the corners. At the center of the room is a lump of metal, poorly processed, full of overburden and gangue. Exactly as instructed.

“Ugly, isn’t it?” she asks, approaching the lump and placing her hand lightly on top of it. She can sense the bits of earth trapped in the metal, pulsing under her fingertips, but not nearly as strongly as Mingyu is pulsing behind her. She can practically feel the girl straining against her own impulsivity, holding her excitement at bay. Good. It will make her more perceptive.

“Come over and feel it.” Lin turns and takes the girl’s wrist firmly in her hand. Guiding her closer to the mix of copper and steel, she places Mingyu’s palm on top of the metal. Lin can feel callouses, and a small, twisting scar traveling from arm to wrist.

“Close your eyes.” She does so immediately, Lin’s fingers still lightly resting on the bones of her wrist. Lin watches the transfer’s face. Her brow is furrowed, but her mouths is relaxed, slightly open as she slows her breathing.

“Reach. With the base of your hand. Your palm. Your fingertips. Can you feel the earth inside it?”

Mingyu’s mouth tightens. Her eyelids press together. Lin can practically taste the strain in the beat of her temples, the pockets of her mouth. She wonders if she’s going too fast. Then, at once, Mingyu lets out a soft “hehh” of air, and her eyes dart open before, obediently, once again pressing shut.

“I can feel it!” Her lips form a soft smile, completely unlike the one Lin saw in her office. This is empty of ambition, or determination, or longing. It is simply surprise, and something like joy.

“I can feel it,” she breathes again. “The earth that’s trapped inside it. And… and the bits that got left in the fuse…”

She didn’t expect Mingyu to sense it this early. It’s a good sign. _Control yourself_. No sense getting ahead of things until you see what she can do.

She removes her hand from Mingyu’s wrist, and moves to place her palm against the metal. Easier to feel what’s happening inside.

“Metalbending for us is as intensive, and straining, as bloodbending is to the water tribe, or the passage of lightning to a fire bender. You cannot let the difficult control you. There must be total surety in your center.”

Mingyu nods, eyes still closed, and straightens her posture, rooting her feet firmly, core steady. There is a tension in her hand now, a slight pressure as she seeks the earth she can bend.

Ten long minutes pass.

Nothing happens.

“You’re still holding back.” Lin can feel the impatience biting at her again. She’s spent those minutes thinking of how long they spent in the forges, and now she’s thinking of how long this might take. How long to mold this potential into something she can actually use. When the one thing she does not have, she cannot afford, is time.

The hand against the metal twitches. Heat is coming off Mingyu. Anger. Frustration. Shame.

“Get serious,” Lin barks. “I have no time for self pity.” She opens her eyes and steps back from the metal. Easier to observe her that way, Lin thinks. Less distracting.

“You’re still relying on the impurities _in_ the metal,” she instructs, trying to keep her voice even. “You need to use those impurities to _guide_ the metal. Do you think a smith has to work this hard to cast iron?”

Mingyu shakes her head, roughly. There is no trace of a smile now. Lin can feel the seconds stretch into minutes again. A deep purple stain is spreading, like a bruise, across Mingyu’s face, staining the tips of her ears.

“Enough.” Lin bends forward. Tugs Mingyu’s hand away from the metal. Her eyes flash open, still dark with concentration.

“I should have known you weren’t prepared.” Su would not have had this trouble, Lin thinks bitterly. It does not occur to her, until later, to remember that Su, too, failed to train this girl, this girl whose potential seems so great and whose abilities still read as somehow stunted. All that occurs to her now is that she has tried everything on Mingyu that she herself did to learn metalbending, and it has failed.

“You were right,” she snaps. “You will be placed with the other bending detectives and continue this work on your own. When you feel prepared to really dedicate yourself, we can try again.” She has no time for green recruits. No time for arrogant anger, for shame that twists itself into resentment. Better to break that now.

Mingyu raises her head, and Lin sees the tears in her eyes.

“I apologize, Chief Beifong, for wasting your time. It won’t happen again.”

No, it doesn’t occur to her then. When it does, it’s many moments later, in her office. When a currant-colored blush flames against her cheek, and Lin recognizes the numbness on her face where the scars should burn.

***

 

They’ve tossed her pack near the corner, one dingy green duffel bag slumping against the frame of a bed she supposes must be hers. Metal, of course. Figures.

Mingyu has been placed with the rest of the “green” recruits. It’s a play on three fronts, really: their new status in the capital, their rank under Lin Beifong, and their base’s location, on the very edge of the spirit vines. From the looks of the bulletins coming out of Republic City over the past year, the vines have become more and more aggressive. Not enough to have claimed a major center, attacking almost anyone who tried to go back to their homes. Now its tendrils had begun snaking under houses and along the slates of neighboring roofs. More and more spirit creatures had been gathering at its edges. With the Avatar gone, President Raiko worried the spirits might be preparing to mass an attack.

She doesn’t think so, somehow. It’s difficult for Mingyu to remember that this plane was occupied by people long before the vines came, that the spirits were in the occupiers here. Walking along the edge of the vines, the crush of jade and emerald heavy in the jungle air, she felt like that forest had existed long before Republic City was built. The energy thrumming out from the green mass had not felt posturing or aggressive or self-righteous. It had felt… wary.

_Who do you think you are, the Avatar? You can’t feel vines!_

Mingyu leans her head back and lets it thump, softly, against the wood of the cabin wall. If anything, today had shown her just how out of touch with bending she really was. And if she wasn’t a good bender, how could she expect to read the energy that gave her those powers to begin with?

At least, with everyone else at dinner, she could finally be alone. She can’t remember the last time she'd been surrounded by so many people she didn't know. Even in Macau, she'd had some family. Some privacy. Dressing her scars won't be fun here; she already saw some of the transfers staring when she'd changed for her meeting with the Chief. Eyes pricking against the braid-like tracks on her stomach, the hot, tender-looking burn clasping her right arm from elbow to wrist. Maybe it would keep them from prying too much. She didn't feel like having more wide-eyed soldiers asking her about corrupt executives and Triad gangs, fawning over her work in the boonies when she couldn't even pass her first test in the City.

Self pity leaves a slick taste in her mouth, bitter and cloying. She swallows it down, rolls her head forward, and reaches for her bag. She could read her Aunt's letter again. She could try meditation. She could walk into the spirit forest and see what happens.

"Not at dinner, Zhao?"

There are many reasons why Mingyu is grateful these particular barracks don't utilize bunk beds. If they did, she would have just plowed her head right through the top bunk.

"Chief Beifong! I had no idea you..." It's exhausting being this correct and buttoned-down. She decides it's late enough in the day to be blunt. "What are you doing here?"

Lin Beifong looks like she's asking herself the same question. The expression on her hard, pale face is difficult to read.

"I would like to apologize, Zhao Mingyu." Her eyes are focused on the wall somewhere above Mingyu's head. "I lectured you about patience and dedication, and then showed myself capable of neither.”

Mingyu stands up and straightens, trying to match Lin’s posture. Maybe you have to be Chief for a few years before your spine can do that.

“I wasn’t showing much of them, myself.” She is grateful, now, that the tears she shed were hours ago. That she’s having this conversation in the ramshackle cabin that passes for her barracks, not surrounded by the metal and stone of Police Headquarters.

“But I thank you for the apology.” She bows her head, and catches the Chief’s gaze. “It’s good to know Beifongs can do things as mundane as apologize."

She’s not mistaken this time. There’s definitely a smile fighting to break over Chief’s Beifong’s face now. Something that was crackling in the air, leftover from the moment in the training room, dissipates.

“I don’t have the right to order you around any more today,” Chief Beifong says. “But if you’re up for it, I have something I’d like to show you.”

She doesn’t wait for Mingyu to respond; but then, it was a courtesy even to make that sentence sound like a request. She turns and walks out of the cabin, with Mingyu hurrying to keep up with her purposeful stride.

At first, they seem to be heading back to Headquarters. They walk alongside the spirit forest for some minutes. Mingyu can see the spires of Future Industries in the distance. Then, suddenly, Chief Beifong takes a left, and walks straight through a small path between the vines.

Mingyu knows better than to ask questions, so she contents herself with hammering them along the inside of her skull. She wasn’t sure officers were supposed to even enter the forest unless a civilian had wandered into it. Then again, she could hardly have better backup than the woman in front of her. She can’t help noticing, as much space as the Chief takes up, her tall, wiry frame shoving through the forest, none of the vines seem to get in her way. In fact, if she weren’t feeling a bit paranoid already, she’d think they were purposely wafting aside.

They can’t have gone more than a kilometer when they reach an open, circular door. It’s old, some sort of soft stone, with scholar trees flanking its arches and what may be letters decorating the top, hidden under a fine layer of moss.

She follows Chief Beifong through the doorway – and gasps.

It’s a garden. A small pond sits at the center of its circle, wet stones balancing like lily ponds at the edges and fanning to the center. Orchids have littered the water and grass with petals, and Mingyu can see other trees as well, trees she hasn’t seen since her childhood. Words like _katsura_ and _maidenhair_ dart across her mind. The air is heavy with the smell of green.

But it’s the tree at the far end that takes her breath away. Its trunk is squat on the ground, but its branches look thick enough to be trunks of their own. They twist and curve like the shudder of a wave, splitting into fingers of thinner, ever more twining branches. And at the ends, surrounding the tree like a cloud of sunset, are notes of red, thousands of them, and Mingyu cannot say if they are petals or leaves.

“It’s quite something, isn’t it?” Lin stands to the side, watching Mingyu breathe the garden in. Evening is beginning to color the garden lightly in shades of blue and grey, casting dappled shadows on the water. “When I was young, a… an old associate of mine, an airbender, would take me here to meditate. To get away.”

She walks along the edge of the pond, towards the sunset tree. Mingyu follows as she talks. “It was actually in this pavilion that I invented the cables I use. The ones made for my officers are standard grapplers, but these – these were my own special blend. More flexible than most earthbending allows us to be.” She reaches the edge of the tree, and ducks her head slightly to go under its canopy. “It was the structure of this, that led me to it.” She places her hand on one of the low, sloping branches. Her voice is almost a murmur. “The movement of it. Earth and air. Fire and water.”

She gives herself a little shake, like someone waking from a dream. She reaches into a pouch on her belt, pulls out a small lump of metal, and places it in Mingyu’s hand.

“I want you to practice metalbending again, Officer Zhao. I want you to work at the center of the lake, with only a stone to ground you. And I want you to listen, to everything you hear, while you do it.”

Perhaps it’s the spring wind on her cheek. Or the quiet of the garden. Or the sense that this place, surrounded by life from another world, has none of the rules she follows and challenges and fears. As she removes her shoes and steps on the wet, smooth stones that take her to the center of the lake, Mingyu feels further from herself, the weight of herself, than she has in years.

“Take a bending stance.” Mingyu places her left foot on one stone, her right on the other, and raises her arms. Hands forward, pointing finger raised, the rest curled towards her palms. The rocks form a kind of pattern, she realizes; like a flower.

“When I came here with my airbender, he showed me that earth and air not opposites.” Lin’s voice, though back to its usual, brusque tone, seems to be coming from much farther than the edge of the pond. Mingyu almost shifts to look back at her before she remembers to focus. “That’s just bender nonsense. Earth and air are part of the same dance the holds balance and harmony in our world. To fight against it is to block your true potential. The same rifts that allowed the Fire Nation and the Water Tribes – ” But Lin stops, abruptly, and Mingyu wonders if she can feel, all the way through the roots of the tree, how Mingyu’s limbs suddenly stiffen.

“Close your eyes.” She does so, a bit grudgingly, and loses the beauty of her surroundings to darkness. “You received a classical education, I believe. You have seen diagrams, even demonstrations, of the movements of airbenders.”

“Yes.”

“Good. You must have noticed, the completeness of their actions. Everything bending back into itself, flowing freely, channeling in a circle.” Lin’s voice becomes lower, softer than Mingyu has ever heard it. “Listen to the air around you. Taste it flowing through you. Can you feel it?”

She concentrates. There are her lungs expanding, her mouth drying, her nose stinging slightly as a breeze passes by.

“Not quite.” The voice wafts to her on the current of the wind. “You already _know_ the air; what it does, what it brings. Now it’s time for you to listen to it, like you listen to the earth. You can already sense what draws your bending through you. Now listen to the air through your skin.”

Without noticing it, Mingyu shifts her weight to the balls of her feet. She moves as though to push the earth beneath her forward, then opens her fist, fingers splayed against dark. And she can feel it, somehow. In the blood coursing through her veins. Against the rocks at her feet. Exhaled from the oil of her skin.

“Hold the metal out,” Lin instructs. Mingyu can feel the earth throbbing against the lump in her right palm. “Now move to bend it – and move like an airbender. Carry it in a circle. Pull the earth through the metal as you pull air through your lungs.”

Slowly, Mingyu opens her right hand. She raises her arm above her head, lifting the earth in the metal as she does so. She pictures the limbs of the sunset tree. She shifts her legs, moving them in a circle, like the spin of a fan, her other arm teasing against the earth. She does it for what seems like hours. And feels. And listens.

“Mingyu.”

 _Lin,_ she thinks. _Lin._

“Open your eyes.”

The metal stretches above her, twisting and sloping, floating out in branches like the limbs of a tree.

“Congratulations,” Lin says, with only a trace of smugness. “You’re a metalbender.”

**Author's Note:**

> A Series of Endless Notes:
> 
> *I imagine typers to be like movers in the Avatarverse: slightly clunkier name, slightly cooler inventor.
> 
> *The name Zhao should sound familiar to Avatar:TLA viewers. 
> 
> *Mingyu, in Classical Mandarin, means “bright jade.” Lin means “beautiful jade.”
> 
> *Macau, like Hong Kong, is a former colony in China. The Portuguese province rejoined the People’s Republic in the late 1990s. In the Avatar universe, the Fire Nation controlled that pocket of the Earth Kingdom since the beginning of the 100 Years War.
> 
> *Gangue is the commercially worthless material that surrounds or is mixed with a wanted mineral in an ore deposit. This is different from overburden, the waste rock overlying an ore or mineral body that can be displaced during mining without processing.
> 
> *The orchid pavilion is based on descriptions of Jingu Yuan, the Guardian of the Golden Valley. It was a retreat for poets and scholars, and seems, at first glance, like a very un-Lin place to go.
> 
> *I have based the bending techniques on both the Avatarverse's take on martial arts, and Lin's own practice of incorporating airbending moves into her metal manipulation.


End file.
